Thursday, June 4, 2009

Although we will all miss Kate's wonderful blog entries, we can now look forward to blog entries by our two new students, David Green and Jeff Smith (shown here watching Joey Verge check a camera trap at a striped hyena den in Shompole). Both Jeff & Dave joined the project in April, and Kate trained them before she left. They will be monitoring the spotted hyena clans on the western side of the Masai Mara.

In addition, Joey Verge (shown here atop our Landcruiser, listening for a lost striped hyena), who you may recall has been working on striped hyenas in Shompole, Kenya for the past several months, will be moving to the Mara later in June to work on spotted hyenas. Thus you can expect to see posts on this blog from all three of these guys in the coming months.

I'll post some camera trap pictures in my next blog entry. To attract striped hyenas (and just about every other animal you can imagine!) to the camera traps, we dip pipe cleaners into scents that are commercially available at places like Cabelas (eg., animals love Triple X scent!) and wrap the pipe cleaners around a wooden stick that gets hammered into the ground near the camera.

Yes, Leslie will be back next week, and Andy will be back in the field in early January. Right now he's in Michigan doing some lab work.

Help Support the Research

You can help support our research by making a donation to the Hyena Research Fund at MSU. Your contributions provide necessary resources for the students and scientists to continue our work. Use the link below to make a donation or contact MSU for additional details.